1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to methods and systems for package management.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a typical internet website architecture, webpages of a website are hosted on a remotely situated web server that is accessible via a network. If a user loses network connectivity, then the user also loses the ability to access the webpages. This is a generally accepted norm for web browsing. However, in the case of an electronic publication, loss of connectivity resulting in loss of content delivery would present a poor user experience. For in keeping with the electronic publication as an analogue of a physical print publication, once properly downloaded, the entirety of the electronic publication should be made available to the user without continuing dependence on network connectivity.
The increasing popularity of mobile devices such as cellular phones and tablet computers has fueled the growth of standalone applications (often referred to as “apps”) which are instantiated through an existing browser associated with the mobile device. To address the issue of network dependency, the HyperText Markup Language 5 (HTML5) standard supports a cache manifest which, lists files (e.g. html, css, jpegs, pngs, etc.) for the browser to download and cache locally, enabling an application to function in a standalone fashion. However, the HTML5 cache manifest requires one to list all possible required files, or else the application will not have all files cached which it potentially requires. Such an inflexible approach is not practical for an application which provides access to large quantities of data—e.g. an electronic publication application which provides access to electronic publications—as a manifest listing of all potentially required data files would result in lengthy downloads that may not be relevant for a given user and would degrade the user experience.
It is in this context that embodiments of the invention arise.